Assessing the physical potential capacity of direct air capture with integrated supply of low‐carbon energy sources

Abstract

Direct Air Capture (DAC) is a negative emission technology that can remove up to 10–20 Gt of CO2 per year. However, to achieve this potential, DAC systems must be coupled to suitable locally available energy sources and sited near geological storage. This study explores the potential of low‐carbon energy sources to supply power and heat to the DAC process in a dedicated, self‐sufficient system tailored for each energy source. Solar, geothermal, woody biomass, wind, and nuclear energy sources are assessed for their global energy supply potential and possible land use requirements. While the options differ in area requirement and regional efficacy, we estimate that all the regionally specific technologies considered can supply energy to achieve significant removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere globally. The amount of energy physically available from solar, offshore wind, and woody biomass converts to a removal potential of 160–971, 45–150, and 2–5 Gt CO2/year, respectively. Thus, negative emission targets can be reached by utilizing a moderate fraction of the overall potential of several different low‐carbon energy sources for DAC while the magnitude of the potential changes significantly according to the source of energy. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Geo-Spatial Economic Assessment of the Potential Development of Bioenergy Combined with Direct Air Carbon Capture (BEDAC) in the USA

“…Using a dedicated FGCC system for the BECCS plant is likely to be energetically and financially favorable oversimply deploying more DAC. The heat consumption of FGCC is assumed to be between 2.4 and 2.8 GJ/t CO 2 (106–123 kJ/mol), which is a common range for commercial liquid amine-based systems and it assumes that 97% capture is feasible with this heat consumption. To account for processing and drying, it subtracts 10% of the HHV in the low energy consumption case and 20% in the high energy consumption case. , If the BECCS plant is used as the CHP source for BEDAC instead of power supply to the grid, then an additional 0.26–0.77 t CO 2 are captured via DAC per ton of CO 2 captured via the FGCC unit.…”

“…This first set of tests check how sensitive are the results to these two parameters by assuming a limited use of forest residues for biomass supply and a higher energy demand for DAC. The new values are from Favero et al 20 and Fahr et al 8 respectively.…”

“…Fahr et al 8 addressed the first question by evaluating different low carbon energy sources, namely, solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear and their integration with solid sorbent-based DAC. The authors concluded that each of these sources could make significant contributions to DAC.…”

“…The technology uses bioenergy production with capture on the flue gas and couples this to DAC by using the heat and electricity produced by the plant as described in more detail by Fahr et al 8 In the study, two types of sequestration modes have been selected, either through carbonate mineralization in fractured bedrock or through aqueous solution in deep saline aquifers. Finally, by including cost estimates of each stage of the BEDAC system, this study measures the cost-effective composition of sequestration in each region under specific mitigation goals.…”

Recent advances in direct air capture by adsorption

“…65 The adsorbent cycle life and stability are also critical to determining the operating cost but are often neglected in process design. 54 Integrating low-cost industrial waste heat 517 or low-carbon energy sources such as solar, geothermal, biomass, wind, and nuclear 518,519 energy for regeneration is an effective approach to significantly cut down the energy cost and increase the physical potential capacity of DAC. The capture cost can be further reduced by 50%, of which international cooperation plays an important role due to lower business risk when countries commit and provide guarantees.…”